Latest articles
by Paul Haeder / August 28th, 2014
one giant huff and puff industry of pundits and philosophers stuck in the meaning of the universe from their safe, warm ivory towers and fat-butt computer chairs
Meta-cognition, big-talking intellectuals, the tribe talking among itself, whites & Jews controlling the narratives, and more and more delusional stuff tied to grassroots movements and the big lies of Media-Corporations-Big Government-Schools-PR-Religion.
It all starts with a Henry Giroux talking to a Dennis Bernstein, and the beat goes on and on. Look, I am a fan of some of Henry’s stuff, the pedagogy of the oppressed, the discussions on youth, on corruption, and on empire and …
by Ron Forthofer / August 28th, 2014
Many Americans may think this foreign policy issue doesn’t concern them. If they think about this issue at all, many say that it’s not our business and we should just let them fight it out. However the US has been deeply involved in this conflict since before Israel declared its existence.
A Strong and Accurate Warning
For example, in 1947 before the Partition Plan for Palestine was approved by the UN General Assembly, Loy Henderson, director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, warned: “The UNSCOP [U.N. Special Committee on Palestine] Majority Plan is not only unworkable; …
by Burkely Hermann / August 28th, 2014
Commemorations of WWI have already begun in the West. Over ten million died in battle and another twenty million, soldiers and civilians alike, died from hunger and disease. In “War is the Health of the State“, an excerpt from his book, A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn wrote: “No one since [1914]…has been able to show that the war brought any gain for humanity.” It is important, therefore, to set the record straight and demonstrate that WWI was an imperialist war.
There were a number of motives for this war, one being a determination of the ruling …
Is driving a wedge between us all
by Lesley Docksey / August 27th, 2014
Three weeks to go and the debate over the Scottish Referendum gets no better. Reason goes down the drain. The large number of anti-independence people giving their views can do nothing but issue gloom and doom warnings for Scotland’s grim fate if it casts itself adrift from the United Kingdom.
The No side, or Better Together as it likes to be called (it was going to change that to “No Thanks” but that seems to have been quietly forgotten) focuses almost entirely on money – sorry – “economy”. It produces some totally inane statements, such as “Pakistan is richer …
Why Was Gaza Betrayed
by Ramzy Baroud / August 27th, 2014
Ask any Arab ruler, and they will tell you of the great sacrifices their countries have made for Palestine and the Palestinians. However, both history and present reality are testaments, not only to Arab failure to live up to the role expected of them and stand in solidarity with their own oppressed brethren, but also to the official Arab betrayal of the Palestinian cause. The current war on Gaza, and the dubious role played by Egypt in the ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel are cases in point.
Read these comments by Aaron David Miller, a …
by Scott Thomas Outlar / August 27th, 2014
Verily, wicked minions who serve Satanic energy forces work to subvert and suppress the Holy Human Spirit by keeping our minds, hearts, guts and souls locked in a low, base, materialistic, illusory, physical vibration.
Verily, they can only achieve their Evil Ends if we allow them to influence our lives by acting in compliance with the methods of control and manipulation they use.
If we follow the guidelines of their corrupt and decadent system, we are willingly placing ourselves in their greedy, dirty, soiled hands.
If we shun and hate their system by denying and turning away from its rules, regulations and unjust …
Stop brown coal mining
by Ron Ridenour / August 27th, 2014
Choking on tears, the owner of Campsite Deulo haltingly greeted 300 activists standing by the camp’s lake, which the “leftist” regional Brandenburg government of Social Democrats (SPD) and socialist The Left (Die Linke) ((Brandenburg Die Linke recently reversed its anti-coal position, contradicting national Die Linke’s stand. In the last regional elections it won 30% of the votes and rules with the SPD, which took 35% of the votes. Apparently, Die Linke, which was pro-socialist, anti-capitalist and against imperial wars, has capitulated to what it sees as acquiring more votes from some sectors of the working class, including miners. Ironically, traditional …
All of Them
by Robert Hunziker / August 26th, 2014
Bees are some of the busiest, most industrious creatures on planet Earth. Basically, they mind their own business whilst performing pollination chores that ultimately provide humankind with every third bite of food. Yes, they’re absolutely critical to the world’s food chain all the way up to your mouth, every third bite.
“Pollen truly is the ‘gold dust of nature’. It is the culmination of the life force of plants,” The Importance of Bees, CC Pollen Co.
But, horror of horrors, bees are dying off like never before. For example, Michigan and Indiana lost 60% of their bee populations this past winter, …
Constitutes Culpable Criminal Complicity
by William Hanna / August 26th, 2014
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia (1892-1975)
After more than sixty years of being paralysed into silence by the Zionist venom — the stigma of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial — that prevented condemnation of incalculable cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, and ruthless violation of the legal and natural human rights of the Palestinian people by a nation devoid of conscience, humanity, …
by John Andrews / August 26th, 2014
He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath, ‘The horror! The horror!’”
— Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Last Monday (18th August) Channel Four’s “Dispatches” screened a documentary by the independent film maker Evan Williams titled Nigeria’s Hidden War. Broadcast as it was, at 11 p.m. on a weekday night, it probably only attracted about six viewers. I recorded it.
It was truly horrific. Those of us who are familiar with Africa’s long history of agony would not have been too surprised by the content …
by Jan Oberg / August 26th, 2014
Denmark’s participation in the Iraq war and as occupying power 2003-2007 is, without a doubt, the worst and most criminal piece of foreign policy since 1945.
It was decided by the government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen who afterwards was rewarded by being appointed to the post of NATO S-G.
Now a military transport for the U.S.
On Wednesday this week, the Danish parliament, Folketinget, will decided to continue this foreign policy blunder by authorising a Danish Hercules military transport aircraft to participate in bringing weapons into the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq at the request of the U.S.
Humanitarian less than a week …
by Robert S. Becker / August 26th, 2014
SNL Satire Downplayed Her Fraudulence
Awash with grim, hard times, and pained by Robin Williams’ tragic departure, those of us whose survival depends on comic interludes have not yet abandoned hope. Did not Williams show the way, mining laughter from misery? There are goofy right wing stalwarts, like Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Louis Gohmert, still parading as lords of misrule. But who matches Sarah Palin as clueless clown – blundering on, immutably dense, feet firmly cemented in mouth? Her latest, get-rich-quick stunt – her subscription-only TV channel about all things Palin. What a deal, for only ten bucks a month? …
by Gary Engler / August 26th, 2014
For the numerous readers who asked: “But what can we do?” after reading my Top 10 Reasons to Hate Capitalism published here on Dissident Voice:
10. We can elect governments that represent people rather than corporations. This will require serious electoral reform and include laws to make it clear corporations are not people and therefore cannot participate in the political process. A government representing all the people would regulate corporations to ensure socially responsible behaviour and transform psychopathic capitalist monstrosities into democratic, social enterprises that benefit all.
9. We can build communities and organizations that encourage solidarity, compassion and altruism. These …
The High-stakes Chess Match for Argentina
by Ellen Brown / August 26th, 2014
If Argentina were in a high-stakes chess match, the country’s actions this week would be the equivalent of flipping over all the pieces on the board.
– David Dayen, Fiscal Times, August 22, 2014
Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds, which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar, defeating a 2005 settlement in which 92% of creditors agreed to accept a 70% haircut on their bonds. A US court has backed the vulture funds; but last week, Argentina …
by Kathy Kelly / August 25th, 2014
Here in Kabul, one of my finest friends is Zekerullah, who has gone back to school in the 8th grade although he is an18-year old young man who has already had to learn far too many of life’s harsh lessons.
Years ago and miles from here, when he was a child in the province of Bamiyan, and before he ran away from school, Zekerullah led a double life, earning income for his family each night as a construction crew laborer, and then attempting to attend school in the daytime. In between these tasks the need to provide his family with fuel …
by L'Ordre / August 25th, 2014
A move for the restoration of the Mont Order to its former status as a club of progressive thinkers and students has been successfully made. The Zero State, a techno-progressive activist group centered on the ideas of M. Amon Twyman, is now associated with the Mont Order.
While it is only a formative step, this change cannot be underestimated. It marks the first move towards the restoration of the Mont Order to an actual association of groups and churches since its original disintegration in 1999.
My negotiations with M. Amon Twyman, head of the WAVE think tank responsible over …
by Brian J. Trautman / August 24th, 2014
The police response to public protests in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the deadly August 9 shooting of Michael Brown, Jr., an unarmed eighteen-year-old black man killed by a white police officer, was a prime illustration of the hyper-aggressive nature of policing in America today. The residents of Ferguson fed up with hostile and abusive police behavior continue to flood the streets to demand justice for Mike Brown and other victims of police brutality. They have been joined in solidarity by people of conscience in other cities (e.g., Oakland, NYC). Their anger and frustration was exacerbated by the heavy-handed …
by Ken Meyercord / August 24th, 2014
As if events in Iraq weren’t confusing enough, media coverage of what’s going on seems to leave out a critical part of the story. To hear the media tell it, a quick sweep of cities and towns from Mosul south was spearheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant/al Shams (hence the dual acronyms ISIL and ISIS in reference to the same group). Now, al-Da’ish (yet another name for the group based on their name in Arabic) is portrayed as a threat to the central government in Baghdad and hence subject to American military action (i.e., bombing).
But a …
by Yves Engler / August 24th, 2014
When is a Canadian who leaves this country to join a foreign military force and participate in the killing of innocent civilians, including children, called a terror tourist and sent to jail?
a) Always;
b) Never;
c) Only when that person joins a military force the Conservative government disagrees with.
Numerous ministers in the current federal government have loudly denounced the radicalization of Canadian youth in foreign wars. Last year, the Conservatives passed a law that further criminalizes “leaving or attempting to leave Canada” to commit terrorism. Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney recently said the government is “try[ing] to monitor networks that recruit and radicalize …
by Philip A. Farruggio / August 24th, 2014
For that minority of us who reject both this Military Industrial Empire and its ‘Two Party One Party’ system, we are marginalized and ostracized. For that smaller segment of our grouping that holds to most of the conspiracy theories of empire… Wow!! We are just simply crazy! Factor out the way out theories of aliens inside the Illuminati, the shape shifting reptilians, the One World Socialist government of the Fabian Society, or the Jews behind all our world wars etc. That is not what this writer is speaking about. No, I and others who study history and truth (which our …
by Paul Haeder / August 24th, 2014
Easy as easy-bake Monsanto pie. The blogsphere, well, I respect some of it, DV being one venue. But really, what spineless, neutered digital tigers are out there, paper tigers mouthing off, total comfort, really not asking for that ultimate solution to the crony capitalism, totalitarianism and fascism of the coin of the realm mixed up in military-drug-money-media-education madness? That solution is annihilation, but if we whisper those words, if we call for a real fight, throwing fire at fire, well, we will be labeled as flipped out or anti-American/Jew/Capitalism.
If capitalism and fascism and One Percenters and the hedge funders and …
by Gary Leupp / August 23rd, 2014
About a week into the Ferguson crisis, cable TV anchors like Chris Cuomo and Anderson Cooper began to decry the presence of “outside agitators” in the community. This was after SWAT teams with MRAP trucks and M-16 assault rifles came from outside in response to crimes against property (window-smashing and looting) prompted by outrage at the police killing of an unarmed black 18-year-old boy.
There are 53 members of the Ferguson police force, 50 of them white in a town that is almost 70% black. One in four people lives below the federal poverty line in Ferguson, and most black residents …
Why Black Rage is Conscious, Justified, and Long Overdue
by Colin Jenkins / August 23rd, 2014
On a crisp, Fall evening in 1992, while I was a freshman at a SUNY (State University of New York) school, the campus erupted after a white, male student assaulted a black, female student. Being an associate of the African American Student Union Body Association (AASUBA) at the time, I attended an emergency meeting that was called in order to discuss the incident and consider potential responses. The meeting ensued, but there was little discussion. Instead, the room was a hotbed of rage. As one of only two white students among over fifty members and associates, some of the fury …
by Alton C. Thompson / August 23rd, 2014
It has been said (in the Gale Encyclopedia of U. S. History) of colonial America that:
In colonial America, feudalism began as an extension of the English manorial system. In addition to the Puritans and the Protestants, who came from England to the New World seeking religious freedom, some early colonists came to expand their estates by establishing feudal domains. While the Puritans and the Protestants established colonies in New England, the Anglicans established the proprietary colonies of Maryland, the Carolinas, and Delaware, and the Dutch brought similar systems to New Amsterdam (later New York) and New Jersey. Similar …
Western leaders 'nobble' the International Criminal Court
by Stuart Littlewood / August 23rd, 2014
Was anyone surprised to hear that the International Criminal Court is under pressure not to investigate Israel’s war crimes in Gaza?
The British government wouldn’t even vote for the UN Human Rights Council’s proposal to launch an inquiry and, along with France, abstained. The US, as expected, voted against. Even Ireland, Germany and Italy abstained in an extraordinary show of collective political cowardice. The enemy within had revealed itself.
As The Guardian reported, “at stake is the future of the ICC itself, an experiment in international justice that occupies a fragile position with no superpower backing. Russia, China and India have …
by Al Engler / August 22nd, 2014
Prevailing neo-liberal dogma holds that private capital is responsible for most economic innovation and that governments stand in the way. In The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs, Private Sector Myths, Mariana Mazzucato points out that most research is funded by governments and that current anti-government policies not only widen disparities but threaten future innovation, especially the mobilization of resources necessary to rapidly shift away from dependence on carbon-spewing fossil fuels.
Mazzucato—professor of The Economics of Innovation at Sussex University in the UK—argues that capitalists are not the visionary risk-takers that free-market economists, the corporate media and politicians would have …
U.S. takes little responsibility, offers little protection
by William Boardman / August 22nd, 2014
Ferguson, Gaza, and Luhansk bleed all the time these days and the United States does nothing very useful for any of them. Not in out “national interest.” Simpler and easier to blame the victims. Can’t waste our precious resources.
Ferguson, Gaza, and Luhansk have been bleeding for days, for weeks, for years, forever in current and chronic crisis, and what does the United States do to help any of them?
Faced with these and other huge humanitarian challenges, the United States puts its big-hearted humanitarian effort into a renewed war in Iraq, acting as if it was only a mission to rescue …
by Eva Bartlett / August 22nd, 2014
In June, 2014, I met with Dr. Ali Haidar, Syria’s Minister of National Reconciliation, in his Damascus office. An eye surgeon and leader of the SSNP (Syrian Social Nationalist Party, an opposition party within Syria), Dr. Haidar assumed position as Minister of Reconciliation in June 2012.
Photograph by Eva Bartlett
Eva Bartlett: What is ‘Mussalaha’ (‘Reconciliation’)? How did it begin?
Dr. Ali Haidar: In February, 2012, the Syrian government changed the constitution, and in May Syria held Parliamentary elections. We, as an opposition party, joined the elections, because we believe that the …
The family cannot rely on the grand jury system or Attorney General Holder
by Kevin Zeese / August 22nd, 2014
The grand jury process in the United States is rigged for the prosecutor. There is an old saying among lawyers “A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.” Of course, the reverse is also true; the prosecutor can also prevent an indictment. The prosecutor controls the grand jury process which is conducted in secret without even a judge present. The prosecutor decides what witnesses to call and there is no opportunity for a defense lawyer or attorney for the family to participate.
Further, the make-up of the grand jury which comes from St. Louis County (not the city of St. Louis) where …
by Medea Benjamin / August 22nd, 2014
In a brilliant August 17 segment of Last Week Tonight, HBO host John Oliver ripped into small towns that have equipped their police with war-like military equipment. One town was Keene, New Hampshire, where their military-grade armored personnel truck was acquired to protect critical targets –– like the annual Pumpkin Festival. Another was Doraville, Georgia. Oliver showed a wild video clip from the Doraville Police Department’s website, with a Ninja-dressed SWAT team going for a joyride in a souped-up armored personnel carrier, all set to a heavy metal song called “Die MotherF***er Die.”
In a visit to Doraville last week, …
